The Magistrate Part 8

Well--and what did you say?

CHARLOTTE.

Oh, I said, "Well, if you're going to be as eloquent as all that, by Jove, I can't stand out." So we settled it, in the pa.s.sage. He bars flirting till after we're married. That's my misery. What's yours, Aggy?

AGATHA POSKET.

Something awful!

CHARLOTTE.

Cheer up, Aggy! What is it?

AGATHA POSKET.

Well, Charley, you know I lost my poor dear first husband at a very delicate age.

CHARLOTTE.

Well, you were five-and-thirty, dear.

AGATHA POSKET.

Yes, that's what I mean. Five-and-thirty is a very delicate age to find yourself single. You're neither one thing nor the other. You're not exactly a two-year-old, and you don't care to pull a hansom.

However, I soon met Mr. Posket at Spa--bless him!

CHARLOTTE.

And you nominated yourself for the Matrimonial Stakes. Mr.

Farringdon's The Widow, by Bereavement, out of Mourning, ten pounds extra.

AGATHA POSKET.

Yes, Charley, and in less than a month I went triumphantly over the course. But, Charley dear, I didn't carry the fair weight for age--and that's my trouble.

CHARLOTTE.

Oh, dear!

AGATHA POSKET.

Undervaluing aeneas' love, in a moment of, I hope, not unjustifiable vanity, I took five years from my total, which made me thirty-one on my wedding morning.

CHARLOTTE.

Well, dear, many a misguided woman has done that before you.

AGATHA POSKET.

Yes, Charley, but don't you see the consequences? It has thrown everything out. As I am now thirty-one, instead of thirty-six as I ought to be, it stands to reason that I couldn't have been married twenty years ago, which I was. So I have had to fib in proportion.

CHARLOTTE.

I see--making your first marriage occur only fifteen years ago.

AGATHA POSKET.

Exactly.

CHARLOTTE.

Well then, dear, why worry yourself further?

AGATHA POSKET.

Why, dear, don't you see? If I am only thirty-one now, my boy couldn't have been born nineteen years ago, and if he could, he oughtn't to have been, because, on my own showing, I wasn't married till four years later. Now you see the result!

CHARLOTTE.

Which is, that that fine strapping young gentleman over there is only fourteen.

AGATHA POSKET.

Precisely. Isn't it awkward! and his moustache is becoming more and more obvious every day.

CHARLOTTE.

What does the boy himself believe?

AGATHA POSKET.

He believes his mother, of course, as a boy should. As a prudent woman, I always kept him in ignorance of his age--in case of necessity. But it is terribly hard on the poor child, because his aims, instincts, and ambitions are all so horribly in advance of his condition. His food, his books, his amus.e.m.e.nts are out of keeping with his palate, his brain, and his disposition; and with all this suffering--his wretched mother has the remorseful consciousness of having shortened her offspring's life.

CHARLOTTE.

Oh, come, you haven't quite done that.

AGATHA POSKET.

Yes, I have--because, if he lives to be a hundred, he must be buried at ninety-five.

CHARLOTTE.

That's true.

AGATHA POSKET.

Then, there's another aspect. He's a great favourite with all our friends--women friends especially. Even his little music mistress and the girl-servants hug and kiss him because he's such an engaging boy, and I can't stop it. But it's very awful to see these innocent women fondling a young man of nineteen.